Recipe 39: Homemade Oreos

The research for this recipe was really fun. The recipe itself is from Smitten Kitchen (thank you!), with extra tips & hilarity from Flour Child (thank you!).

The history of the Oreo is pretty cool as well. It all began in 1912, and originally the Oreo was a mound-shaped cookie and “available in two flavors; lemon meringue and cream”. The cream variety won out, and over the years the Oreo changed in shape and consistency, ballooning to countless varieties such as “double-stuff”, “strawberry milkshake”, and “blueberry ice cream”, to name a few. Products which contained or were inspired by Oreo cookies range anywhere from ice cream flavors to pie crusts. For more information on the history, as well as speculation as to the origin of the name, check out the Wikipedia article.

NOW, here’s the goods. This is easy enough, essentially make an even number of cookies, then sandwich the filling by wiggling the two halves together.

Recipe 39: Homemade Oreos

Total Time: A little over an hour…

Yield: 24-28 complete cookies

Ingredients:

–Chocolate Cookie:

1+1/4 cup AP flour

1/2 cup Dutch Process Cocoa***

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt (I used a pink mineral salt that we needed to get to)

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup + 2 tbsp unsalted butter (softened)

1 large egg

** So, my local store didn’t have dutch-process cocoa, so I used a conversion to turn my 100% Cocoa (baking; powdered) into the proper ingredient. For every 1/2 cup of 100% cocoa, add 1/3 tsp baking soda. You’re basically making your cocoa powder less acidic.

–Filling:

1/4 cup vegetable shortening

1/4 cup unsalted butter (softened)

2 cups powdered sugar (sifted)

2 tsp vanilla extract

Process:

After your butter is softened to room temp, preheat your oven to 350F. Sift all your dry ingredients for the cookie portion together, and fluff the egg and butter together on medium speed with an electric mixer. Change your blades to something less fine (like a batter/paddle attachment). Slowly add your dry ingredients and allow them to combine until incorporated and pulling away from the bowl. Use a teaspoon measurement and scoop out the cookie dough, rolling into balls. You can place them and flatten them by hand, or use the bottom of a coffee mug to smash them into nice flat rounds in your cookie sheet. I used the cap from our cooking spray to press them into the bottom of a tea saucer.

Allow for 1-2″ spacing. Cook 9 minutes at 350F on parchment paper and then allow to cool to room temperature before adding the filling.

For the filling, fluff the butter & shortening together and sift your powdered sugar. You can use the whipping blades for this portion. Whip your fats with the vanilla extract, and then add your sifted powdered sugar until nice and fluffy. This will be a pretty thick consistency.

I don’t own a piping bag or any tips, so I used a heavy-duty, quart-sized freezer bag. Load it up, twist 3 corners together to force the frosting into one corner. Snip a 1/4″ off the tip and you can secure the top with a rubber band. Squeeze about a teaspoon of filling per cookie, (2-tsp for “double stuffed”), and carefully wiggle the two cookies together to evenly distribute the filling.

1 Cookie + ice cold Milk + one VERY happy man= A perfect Sunday

Enjoy! And I encourage y’all to check out both Smitten Kitchen and Flour Child as each explanation adds more depth to the recipe.